DAY 83
CHALLENGE
“If Jesus existed, why don’t we have statements about him from non-Christian eyewitnesses of his ministry?”
DEFENSE
Because we would not expect to.
Based on events like the feeding of the five thousand and the four thousand (Matt. 14:13–21, 15:32–38), we may estimate that the number of people who were eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry was in the tens of thousands. However, the vast majority were not among his constant companions and only encountered him on one or a handful of occasions. They were thus unlikely to leave a written account.
Further, the vast majority of them—like the vast majority in first-century Palestine—belonged to the rural lower class and were illiterate. The ancient Mediterranean world had a primarily oral culture, and most could not write, especially in rural places like Galilee. Consequently, information about popular figures like Jesus was primarily passed on by oral tradition.
Those most interested in passing on traditions about a teacher— whether in oral or written form—were his disciples, who in this case would be Christians, the people that this challenge is excluding. Non- Christians would have little interest in passing on Jesus’ traditions, much less writing them down.
The number of people who were eyewitnesses of Jesus, non-Chris- tian, able to write, and motivated to write about him was probably very small. It probably included only a few people, like the governor Pontius Pilate, the high priest Caiaphas, and some in their circles. Some of these people probably did write about Jesus. In particular, Pilate likely recorded Jesus’ execution in government records. However, we have no records from any of these people—about anything. All the primary source Roman records perished, as did any kept by the Jewish authorities (lost when the Romans burned the Jerusalem temple in A.D. 70).
We know about people in this period (e.g., popular Jewish figures such as Honi the Circle Maker, Judas the Galilean, Theudas, and the revolutionary known as “the Egyptian”) not because we have eye-witness accounts, which are rare, but because they are mentioned by ancient historians and other writers.
The same types of sources that speak of them also speak of Jesus. In fact, our evidence for Jesus is even better, as in his case we do have statements by eyewitnesses, such as his Christian followers Matthew and John.